The very first uses for the lemon in the Mediterranean
were as an ornamental plant in early Islamic gardens. Tracking the progress
of the lemon tree from its origin in Assam and northern Burma to China,
across Persia and the Arab world to the Mediterranean, is difficult because
of the lemon’s adaptability to hybridization. This has caused problems
for the horticulturist (a variety might not take to a new land), the food
historian (unclear references--for example, the “round citron”),
and the taxonomist (a proliferation of botanical terms). Although the citron--like
a lemon but larger, with a very thick rind and very little pulp or juice--seems
to have been known by the ancient Jews before the time of Christ, and perhaps
dispersed in the Mediterranean by them, the lemon seems not to have been
known in pre-Islamic times. Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa is wrong to claim in
her book A Taste of Ancient Rome, that the Romans grew the lemon.
In fact, the malum medicum mentioned by Pliny is the citron.1
Although there are depictions of citrus fruits from Roman mosaics in Carthage
and frescoes in Pompeii that bear a striking resemblance to oranges and
lemons, this iconographical evidence is not supported by any paleobotanical
or literary evidence, suggesting that the artists either imported the fruits
or saw them in the East.2

The first clear literary evidence of the lemon
tree in any language dates from the early tenth-century Arabic work by
Qustus al-Rumi in his book on farming.3 At the end of the twelfth century,
Ibn Jami’, the personal physician to the great Muslim leader Saladin,
wrote a treatise on the lemon, after which it is mentioned with greater
frequency in the Mediterranean.4

Egyptians of the fourteenth century knew of the
lemon. Most peasants drank a date-and-honey wine. Along the Egyptian Mediterranean
coast, people drank kashkab, a drink made of fermented barley and
mint, rue, black pepper, and citron leaf.5
It appears that the all-American summer drink, lemonade, may have had its
origin in medieval Egypt. Although the lemon originates farther to the
east, and lemonade may very well have been invented in one of the eastern
countries, the earliest written evidence of lemonade comes from Egypt.
The first reference to the lemon in Egypt is in the chronicles of the Persian
poet and traveler Nasir-i-Khusraw (1003-1061?), who left a valuable account
of life in Egypt under the Fatamid caliph al-Mustansir (1035-1094). The
trade in lemon juice was quite considerable by 1104. We know from documents
in the Cairo Geniza--records of the medieval Jewish community in Cairo
from the tenth through thirteenth centuries--that bottles of lemon juice,
qatarmizat, were made with lots of sugar and consumed locally and
exported.6

1. Giacosa, Ilaria Gozzini, A Taste
of Ancient Rome. Anna Herklotz, trans. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1994: 12; Pliny, Natural History, Book XII, vii. 15, who
is clear in stating that the fruit is not eaten, so it surely is not the
lemon. Also see Andrew M. Watson Agricultural Innovation in the Early
Islamic World: The Diffusion of Crops and Farming Techniques, 700-1100.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983: 42-50.

2. Dalby, Andrew. Siren Feasts: A
History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece. London and New York: Routledge.
1996: 144 repeats the view of Tolkowsky, S. Hesperides: A History of
the Culture and Use of Citrus Fruits. London: John Bale, Sons and Curnow,
1938: 100-103, which is strange because he has already told the reader
that that source is unsound (252 n. 34) and although he seems to be aware
of the compelling argument against this notion in Zohary, Daniel and Marcia
Hopf. Domestication of Plants in the Old World: The Origin and Spread
of Cultivated Plants in West Asia, Europe, and the Nile Valley. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1988, he does not go further and seems unaware of the
argument in Watson 1983.

3. Watson 1983: 42-50; 167 n. 1-171 n.
49. On the controversy about the relationship of this work with the Byzantine
Geoponika of the tenth century, see Watson 1983: 221 n. 1.

4. Watson 1983: 46, citing Sarton, George.
Introduction to the History of Science. vol. 1: From Homer to Omar Khayyam.
Baltimore: William & Wilkins for the Carnegie Institution of Washington,
1927: (2) 432-33.

5. Ashtor, E. "Essai sur l'alimentation
des diverses classes sociales dans l'Orient médiéval,"
Annales: Économies. Sociétés. Civilisations.
vol. 23 no. 5 (September-October 1968), p. 1041 claims that the Egyptians,
although they knew of the lemon, did not yet know it as a popular and drinkable
fruit. But the evidence (in the following note) indicates otherwise.